Presently, roaming charges constitute a major expense that a serving mobile operator pays to foreign carriers for connecting calls for the mobile operator's subscribers that roam into a foreign public land mobile network (PLMN). To curtail the expenses on roaming charges associated with using foreign carriers, a serving mobile operator may establish roaming agreements with one or more roaming partners within a specific PLMN. The roaming agreements generally stipulate the manner in which the preferential roaming charges apply bilaterally. Therefore, it is extremely desirable for a serving mobile operator to possess some measure of influence over the selection of foreign carriers that outbound roaming subscribers can use. Unfortunately, current SS7 signaling networks afford mobile operators with little control over which foreign carriers the outbound roaming subscribers select for use. Consequently, this lack of control over the selection of foreign carriers often results in elevated operating costs to the servicing mobile operator as well as less satisfactory quality of service (QoS) provided by the chosen foreign carrier.
Current solutions exist for determining whether a subscriber is allowed to roam in a particular carrier's network. However, these solutions require that queried messages be sent to a dedicated database platform to determine whether the roaming is allowed or not. Requiring specialized query messages and dedicated database platforms increases the cost of the network and the time required to register a mobile subscriber.
Accordingly, a need exists for providing integrated roaming control in a signaling message routing node.